![]() The effort to give physical and artistic expression to God brought humanity to worship the signifier as an idol that embodied transcendent power. But by the third stage that crucial link was broken. At this point, humanity was still cognizant that behind these signifiers God reigned supreme. ![]() Second, they put within the temples erected for this purpose physical images of God’s entourage. First, they paid homage to heavenly bodies out of the belief that God would be pleased by their honoring God’s entourage. Humanity’s slippage was marked by good intentions. It is that omission which prompted Maimonides, the most historically inclined of the medieval Jewish philosophers, to put forth a theory on the origins of polytheism. In short, we are left in the dark by the Torah as to how humanity lost its way theologically. ah after them offered sacrifices spontaneously to express their thanksgiving to God (4:3-4, 8:20).Adam and Eve “heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of day” (3:8). They sensed intuitively that the built-in multiplicity of reality emanated from a single supreme deity with whom they could readily communicate. Given that the polemic against polytheism plays such a central role in the canon of ancient Israel, why is there no speculation in narrative form as to how humanity strayed from monotheism to polytheism? Indeed, the early chapters of Genesis assume that our first ancestors were monotheists. What is really missing at this juncture in the narrative of the Torah is an etiology of polytheism. ![]() ah, how did we come to speak so many different languages?īut that question has a slightly academic ring to it.At best, we try to connect this fragment to the mystery of human language. As preserved, the story is but nine verses - brief, insignificant and unedifying, not much more than a dismissive satire on Babylon. With this episode the Torah turns its attention from the universal to the particular, from the history of humanity to the descendants of Shem, No The last mythological fragment we have in the Torah before we come to the figure of Abraham is the Tower of Babel. Ismar Schorsch Rabbi Herman Abramovitz Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish History and Chancellor Emeritus ![]()
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